The Promise

A meteorite crashes to earth and a strange virus kills all the adults in the world. What would you do? Ryan and his brother travel south, stopping in towns on the way, searching for survivors, determined to save mankind. They’ve made a promise – never give up – never say die, and always help anyone they can find, even when those children seem to have reverted back to savages.

Reviews:

“I sat down on a Saturday afternoon on my porch and started reading The Promise by Jennifer Macaire. I soon came to the realization that I could not put this book down. I became totally involved in this story of children living in a devastated world. I read it from cover to cover and was totally satisfied with the experience.

I do realize that this is a Young Adult book that starts off with almost all people on the Earth dying, but Macaire handles this carefully and the read is acceptable for all ages. Although this book is mainly intended for boys, I think that girls will like it also. What I really liked about this story was the way Ryan, the main character, handled every situation in the story. The promise is something that all of the kids create about how they are going to live their lives. I think it is a good promise and will serve them well. They will create a better world to live in without violence and hate. Personally, I didn’t want to book to end.

The Promise is a great book any should not be missed by any Young Adults.”

~Conan Tigard for a Reading Review

“The Promise is a gorgeous uplifting little story. It reads like a combination of Lord of the Flies and the TV series Survivors. The novel takes the form of a journal written, in the third person, by one of the children and charts their experiences as they travel south to set up their new life. What is particularly well written is their overall learning experiences. It would have been all to easy to make the story about young adults rather than children. The author could then have explained away their apparent knowledge of essential skills as the results of a conveniently wide range of further education. Jennifer Macaire doesn’t do this. Her characters range from infants to young teenagers. When the get sick they find books that tell them what to do. When they need to learn to ride or fish, again they find books. It would also have been easy to make everyone friends who happily work together. Again, Macaire does something different. Some of the survivors are so traumatised by their experiences that it has a negative affect on their relationships. All in all this is a superb original story of children’s ability to survive. Uplifting and enchanting.”

~Eternal Night Reviews

Five Stars! “THE PROMISE by Jennifer Macaire is a riveting short novel that speaks volumes about the fragility of human life. The setting is the near future, not unlike the world of today. A simple meteor enters the atmosphere of the Earth and lands near the Gulf of Mexico. Ten years later, a fisherman catches and is bitten by an odd looking eel with a shell. He promptly transports it to the nearest laboratory, where he jokes about having the fished named after him, Jake Brown. Instead a virus that starts in America spreads around the world and comes to be known as Jakebrown virus, after patient 0.

Initially countries accuse one another of biological warfare as it soon becomes evident that the fatality rate among adults is 100%. Children under fifteen are the only known survivors. One of these children, Ryan, at the age of fourteen decides to begin a journal to document the survival of the few children who survived the virus. By the time his parents die from the virus, when he is twelve, they succeed in training both him and his brother Alan how to survive and care for their baby sister Julia.

After recovering from the disease, Ryan sets out to fulfill a promise he made to his father. He and his siblings pack up and head for Paris to the centers that were set up for children orphaned due to the plague. Along the way there and to his final destination, he and his group look for any surviving children, particularly those who cannot care for themselves or have become subjected to abuse since the fall of the adult population.

Jennifer Macaire has crafted an excellent novel. Although this is a young adult novel, I would also recommend this book to older adults who enjoy inspirational pieces. Macaire’s story is chilling in its realism as the reader imagines such a catastrophe actually occurring in modern days. Even more disturbing is the way Macaire portrays how ill equipped modern children can be in areas of basic survival techniques, though I daresay that Ryan was better prepared than many adults. Most important, THE PROMISE portrays realistically that despite devastation, as long as there is a glimmer of hope, there will always be survivors. This is a book to be enjoyed by readers who enjoy adventure fiction or science fiction/future world plots.”